introversion

Jeff said I should write in this more, so maybe I should.

First, because it’s most prominent, school: I don’t know what changed from last year to this quarter, but I am friggin’ swamped with work and more often than not behind in it. It’s true that I have been slacking… a little… ok, more than I should, but still it just blows my mind that I always seem to have something NOT done and something looming in the future (a paper, a test, something–this time around it’s a midterm and a quiz on Friday and a paper due next Wed. Gr.). And it just really hit me that this quarter is already half over. That’s so crazy.

Other than that, classes are alright. Chem is boring as heck and if I weren’t taking it for a grade, I’d probably just blow it off, but since I am, I do have to put some effort into it. I definitely don’t really have the time to devote to it; I wish it were just bio where you memorized stuff instead of all this figuring out how electrons pair up or what molecules look like crap and the Daily Specials are more of a pain in the ass than interesting, especially since we have to know that material in addition to the course material for the tests. Ugh. Hum drives me nuts on the basis that my professor doesn’t lecture very well; it’s history and history and history and not much about the actual work and even then I’m usually so tuned out by that point that I take crappy notes. This makes me sad because the texts themselves are very interesting: thus far, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Christine de Pizan, de las Casas, Vespucci, and, which I should be reading but have not started yet, Thomas More. I’m not on the edge of screaming or ripping my hair out, but this may chance once I see the grade I got on my first paper (25% of my grade! Only 2 papers this quarter! AAAH!). Spanish is Spanish and such a pain in the ass with the amount of work it is. It doesn’t help that I hardly even thought about Spanish over the summer aside from the random times I attempted to use it at work. I wish it was 2B again where they ease you into all the grammar rules instead of assuming you still must remember something. The readings are also boring since it’s all articles about social commentary rather than short stories (although the themes of the stories in 2A and 2B were very depressing; I think 2A was like oppressed peoples and women and 2B was war). I like my TA though; I had him last quarter. We still chat a little bit before and after class, but not really since I have Lit right after that class and he has another 2C class anyway. And there’s no doubt that Lit is the class that makes this quarter all worth it. Ok, so I hate the research paper writing aspect of it (and I was shocked when our TA used one of my body paragraphs from my essay as an example on using textual evidence), but Prof. Tonkovich just lectures so well that class itself is awesome. I like it a lot because it’s a lot of social studies through literature; Ally tends toward thinking it’s too much in that direction rather than studying the literature itself. Whatever the case is, those 50 minutes always seem to fly by while in every other class, especially Chem which follows immediately afterwards, 50 minutes seem to take an eternity. AND we have an awesome TA. I can almost forget the horrors of fall and spring quarters of last year.

Strange, though, but all my classes seem to be overlapping this quarter. Talking about slavery in Lit ends up connecting to other talks about slavery in Hum which somehow even hookup with talking about slavery in Spanish?! It’s weird, but if there’s one thing that college has really been developing in me it’s a broader way of thinking and just questioning. Hum and even Soc 1A back in Fall Quarter have been really good at this, and Prof. T. seems really determined to break down all my preconceived notions about literature. I like it, but it has been making me question what I want to study. I really, really like delving into social issues and just plan sociology and how societies operate, but I really, really like literature, either as literature or as a tool to understand or decipher society or people, too. If I could combine the two somehow, maybe with a little science like bio that while more indepth wouldn’t make me want to cry with tests (how I wish grades didn’t matter!) and psychology too, it’d be close to my perfect course of study.

The only other big thing going on in my life right now is learning the violin. I love my lessons if only because I end up discussing the most random things with my teacher when I go. We talk about literature sometimes and music history (she has so much random knowledge about women musicians in the past–part of her very feminist spirit I’m sure–which resonates very nicely with all my feminist lit teachers which is really working towards making me pretty feminist, which I’ve always kind of been anyway but not in any real intellectual sense) and just some of the most random topics that always add to the pile of stuff I’m already thinking about. Sheesh. I try to practice everyday, though now school just makes me lazy sometimes and I don’t want to pick up the violin. When I can get over my laziness, though, I’ll sometimes end up playing for like an hour just because the act of playing itself and the sound and feel of the music is so absorbing. I’m still nowhere near decent, but at least I can play stuff now and even fool around and almost decipher songs by ear. Learning and, dare I say it, playing the violin has really affected how I listen to music now; I notice violins in music now that I never noticed before and I find myself randomly thinking about tempo and beat and just how things sound. (I’m falling in love with the concept of sound; it’s part of why I love language–the way it sounds. If foreign languages weren’t so hard for me to learn, I’d definitely be learning more of them. As it is, some of my favorite music is in other languages or in nonsense languages just because not being able to understand the music renders, in a way, the voice as just another musical instrument. I love the pure range and expressiveness of the human voice, which is maybe why I’m so attracted to the violin and the other string instruments.) My singing hasn’t improved much–and I sing in the car a lot during my drives to and from school–but sometimes I can hit notes, even if it does sound horrible.

Thinking about a random comment I made in a conversation between Ally, Michelle, and me, I’m not sure which would be worse for me: going blind or going deaf. I think I’d just go crazy if either happened.

To end on a random note: Ally’s apartment is awesome and I’m sure all her roommates are sick of randomly seeing me there. And I’m not dead on the Internet; my LJ is very active. It’s just… fandom stuff, which I assume doesn’t interest most of the people who would read this blog.